Ripple- a Bluey Story

Tip

I found myself surrounded by trees, and the door to a wooden building behind me. While the greenery was beautiful, there didn't seem to be anything particularly interesting about it, so I went to examine the door. It had no way to observe what was on the other side, so I decided to knock and see if anything happened. I quickly rapped my knuckles on it  few times, no response from the other side came. I put my ear to the door to listen for any footsteps or anything else that would signify the structure was populated.

After a minute or two of dead silence, I decided 'fuck it' and tried to open the door. The handle turned with no problems and I swung the door open. My jaw dropped at the treasure trove I found inside.

The buildings exterior betrayed the interiors pure volume. In other words, it was fucking BIG. On the left hand side of the doorway, displays similar to the ones I found in my garage lined the walls. All contained a different bow, varying from simply different prints to entire other styles. Any type of bow from any time period I could name seemed to be right there, not to mention I couldn't even see every bow, some them were so far away on the wall I honestly couldn't discern them. Then I turned my eyes below the display cases. What seemed to be dispensers of some sort stood there, displaying a cartoonish display of an arrow. On top of each of the machines was a large red button.

And as is the inclination of all sentient life forms, I smashed the hell outta that shit immediately. Silence. Then, a few clanking noises. Then a lot of clanking noises. Then it started shaking violently. Then it started emitting gale force winds. Then it stopped.

Out of a little slot on the front, a quiver of wooden arrows lay. I took a random compound bow off one of the displays, but realized the arrows were too short for the bow. Looking at them closely, I also noticed they were too small for ANY of the bows in the room, and looked almost like a 3D render of the cartoonish arrow on the machine. Needless to say, I was a little confused.

I decided to try activating the contraption one more time to...I'll be honest I wanted to push the big red button again. I still held the compound bow in my hands as I reactivated the machine. It would need to make arrows about double the length and preferably more modern for them to work.

After the earthquake and hurricane cleared, a quiver of arrows exactly like those I had pictured in my head appeared. Convenient. I picked one up and set it to its place in the compound bow, looking for a place to fire it. Somehow, I had failed to notice the entire right hand side of the room.  

As I turned my head, I saw a range that would put any setup I had previously seen to absolute shame. Full recreations of dog bodies, simple bullseye targets on hay bales, plastic animals, and any other type of target you could bring to your mind could be found right in front me. This was starting to become a theme.

I walked over to the designated standing areas and noticed many control panels and screens lining the barriers blocking me from heading directly into the range itself. After a quick examination, I could use these to set the distance and type of target I was shooting at. When I pressed down on the button to change targets, instead of any user interface or selection screen it simply said 'scanning'. 

After a few seconds of that, it stated there was an 'error, code 1m4g1n4t10n. Could not find any targets in user's mind'. Now... what the hell did that mean? It sounded stupid, but I tried my best guess and pressed the button again. This time I thought of a torso of a generic dog, made of a clear material that imitated flesh and was equipped with accurate blood filled organs and other innards. I had seen similar models on gun videos I had watched and assumed they would work adequately here too.

The text on the screen changed to 'Thank you for your input. Target reformed'. I looked over to the target and sure enough, the plastic deer that had been there before had miraculously shifted into the upper torso of a dog, held on a plastic table. I could see that the model had organs, bones, and even blood vessels spread throughout. I tried not to think about how actually creepy it looked as I pulled back the compound bow and let an arrow fly.